Robert Courts: It is a great honour to speak in this important debate on testing for NHS and social care staff. I would like to take this opportunity to put on record the boundless thanks of the people of Witney and West Oxfordshire for everything that social care staff and the NHS have done to care for them throughout this crisis. I know that their gratitude is profound and will never be forgotten.
We have now performed more coronavirus tests than any country in Europe, except for Russia. Given the point we started from and the challenges we have had to overcome, that is a significant accomplishment. We have developed a world-leading diagnostics industry virtually from scratch in a matter of months. That extraordinary achievement is a huge credit to the Government and to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. If we can put the politics to one side for a minute, it is a shining example of what we can do in this country when we all pull together.
It is absolutely right that NHS and social care staff are prioritised for testing. They are on the frontline of the fight against the pandemic, and they should be at the front of the queue when it comes to testing as well. I welcome the fact that we are now in a position where any care worker who needs a coronavirus test can apply for a priority test, and there is not a restriction on the number of tests they can take, but I want to look at how we can do better for them.
We have only been able to expand our testing capacity so significantly and rapidly thanks to the collaboration of the NHS and expert healthcare providers in the private sector. One of the main lessons of this pandemic has been that, during a time of crisis, ideological questions in the realm of healthcare have been put to one side. The priority is ensuring that testing equipment is acquired, PPE is procured and ventilators are produced. That involves teamwork from the private and public sector, and I am pleased that testing is just one of a number of areas where that has borne fruit.
We need to look at what we can do in the future. We need to look at whether there is more that Public Health England, which is operationally independent of Government, could have done to sponsor and to bring on that partnership at an earlier stage. We could look at Germany, which is very good at this aspect of diagnostics and that partnership model, which is one reason why it has done so well during this crisis.
I would like to spend a few moments talking about one of the major employers in my constituency: Abbott. Its diabetes operation is in Witney, where it manufactures FreeStyle Libre diabetes devices, which are life-changing, and I have spoken about them in the House before. Abbott is at the forefront of the nation’s testing regime, albeit its diagnostics section is in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). Abbott has developed a coronavirus antibody test with a specificity and sensitivity of greater than 99%. I had a brilliant call to hear about that, and I am delighted that PHE has now assessed and approved it. The Government have rightly increased their investment in that test and signed a contract to provide over 10 million antibody tests in the coming months.
Antibody testing is not a silver bullet. There is much more work that we need to do. We do not know whether someone acquires resistance to coronavirus once they have had it and recovered, and we do not know how long any resistance will last, but our immunological research is world-leading. I would like to stress that we would not be in this position without the efforts of Abbott, which is an American private healthcare company. We should not view the relationship between the NHS and private healthcare as an adversarial one; it is a collaborative one.

Jo Churchill: Like all other Members from all parts of the House and from all four nations, I add my thanks to all those in the NHS and across social care, although actually it is broader than that. There are those in primary care, our community health teams, those who have adapted the way they work in addiction services and so on, because all these things have had to change at pace.
When we started to get the news towards the end of January that this was a pandemic, we started to realise that we were dealing with a completely unprecedented time, and all those people stepped forward. We have heard repeatedly this afternoon that more people stepped forward to make this a journey of collaboration and innovation. We have seen changes right across the national health service and the services that we have had to build to make decisive changes.
I gently say that 12 weeks ago, as we went into lockdown, many of those services were very different: the delivery of PPE to just over 200 national health trusts has now ramped up to 58,000 providers; we have developed Clipper and local resilience forums to help us with the distribution of PPE throughout these extremely complex changes; and a large amount of work has been done on vaccines and testing. All these things are a tribute to collaboration and we need to thank the innovation of not only private industry, as my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) mentioned, but the Army. This truly has been an effort of public service, and as we have come together—as we have done across the House—we have achieved so much more.
How do we carry on achieving more? There was a challenge before we went into the crisis, and the decision to postpone non-urgent elective treatment was the right one, because it allowed us to have the capacity required to help us to manage increased demand in the NHS. Throughout the outbreak, we have ensured that patients who require urgent treatment have been able to access it and, like many Members, we encourage people not to delay in coming forward for treatment as they normally would, should they require it. NHS has a firm “Help Us Help You” message.
We heard of how, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) put it—I do not think I can put it better—we achieve much more by working together and focusing on what we do best. How do we  drive down waiting times and have routine services return as quickly as possible to their normal provision? We must ensure that that is done in a safe and managed way to maintain capacity but avoid any further surge in covid. As outlined in the guidance already issued to the NHS, the restarting of routine electives should prioritise long waiters first and make full use of all contracted independent-sector hospital and diagnostic capacity.
Cancer was mentioned by severable Members. Urgent cancer care and treatment has continued throughout the pandemic. We know how important it is that referrals, diagnostics and cancer treatment reach pre-pandemic levels as soon as possible. Urgent action should now be taken by hospitals on the two-week-wait referrals, and they should provide two-week-wait out-patient diagnostic appointments at pre-covid-19 levels. That is easy to say but really hard to achieve.
The work done by protected hubs and to ensure that rapid diagnostic centres have been pushed out has been important. During the outbreak, the Secretary of State and I have regularly met the national cancer director, Dame Cally Palmer, to discuss progress not only on how we were dealing with cancer during the crisis, but on restoring cancer services as quickly as possible. We will keep a laser focus on that.
The NHS has continued to deliver over and above. Guidance has been issued and further guidance to restore urgent non-covid services in a safe way while ensuring that surge capacity can be stood up again, should it be needed, is already being planned. Preparations for going forward have already begun: we are learning lessons from where we have been but also driving ourselves to where we need to go. My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) said that we should think about what we can learn, how we can reset and how we can make sure that as we go forward we can take the best of what has changed, develop it and weave it in.

John Lamont: In Scotland and across the entire United Kingdom, we produce some incredible food. In the borders, where I live and which I have the privilege of representing in this place, we have many fine examples, including Standhill Farm tomatoes near Denham; Shaw’s Fine Meats in Lauder; Hardiesmill ethical Scotch beef, which has been enjoyed on the Orient Express and is reared north of Kelso; ice cream produced by the Giacopazzi family in Eyemouth; Border Berries near Rutherford, which is one of Scotland’s last remaining outdoor berry farms; and Born in the Borders brewery outside Jedburgh, which creates real ale using barley grown in the neighbouring rolling fields of the borders.
I love the local foods produced in the borders, and I think that more people around the world should be able to enjoy food from Scotland and the rest of Britain too. That is why I am so excited by the opportunities that the global trade deals will offer to Scotland and the United Kingdom. We should be proud not just of the amazing foods that we produce but of the fact that they are of the highest quality and meet the highest standards of production in the world. Consumers in our country not only have an extensive choice of foods but can be assured that they meet the highest quality.